


Blazon and Banner

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thayet fought for her crown and her happiness, and the collateral damage is Buri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blazon and Banner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



> [Her] blazon is pity, [her] banner beauty. – Vladimir Nabokov

          Buri made a home when Thayet did, but not where Thayet did. Thayet stitched herself into the Conté tapestry and changed its pattern, made it as much to her liking as she possibly could and accepted it where she could not. Thayet made her name synonymous with _Queen_ , her face synonymous with _beauty_ , and in stunning Jonathan and Tortall she broke down any barriers  that stood between her and her new home. Buri never claimed to understand politics; that which she knew, she knew because it was a matter of survival, and Buriram Tourakom was born a survivor. But this hard-won knowledge told her that without a dowry and a treaty, it was very difficult for even a princess of true royal blood, undeniable beauty and considerable charm to win a happily-ever-after. At the time, Buri accepted Thayet’s achievement as worthy. These days, she thinks it’s a victory greater than any she’s won in battle.

 

          But Buri still refused the offer of rooms by Thayet and Jonathan’s apartments, and she resigned her post as bodyguard the day after the wedding. Only Myles raised an eyebrow at that, though he wasn’t the only one who knew to do so; Thayet merely bit her pomegranate-red lip and accepted what she couldn’t change. Looking back, Buri knows that’s when Thayet realised Buri loved her, because it takes a very special kind of bitterness and grief to sever bonds like that one between a K’miri warrior and her liege, bonds tied in blood and oaths. For Buri and Thayet, nothing other than the bite of unrequited love would have been enough.

 

          Thayet made her home Tortall, made herself the perfect, beloved queen, and although Buri’s aware that these days Thayet regrets the stripping away of her heritage as a shameful and hurtful necessity, Buri still can’t help but feel that that helped justify her own breaking away. Tortallans don’t make oaths in blood, and as far as they knew, Buri’s service was not life-long. And so it isn’t. Not in that very specific sense of the word ‘service’, anyway. Buri is no longer the armour over Thayet’s beating heart, only her strong right hand.

 

          Buri might have regretted stepping back to save the fragments of her heart the same way Thayet regrets remaking herself in the image of an adored Tortallan queen, but Buri saw the expression in Thayet’s lovely hazel eyes when Buri resigned her service. Thayet pitied her from the bottom of a compassionate heart, and though Buri is the last one to deny the power of Thayet’s pity – since she became queen, Thayet has made pity the sword to her beauty’s shield, and changed her adopted country for the better – Buri won’t have it applied to her, thank you very much. Buri will not be pitied by the woman she (still) loves.

 

          Moreover, Buri, who used to sleep at Thayet’s feet, across the threshold of her chamber door, or even in her bed if necessary, would not settle for a room in a place of honour beside Thayet’s marital bedchamber. She has accustomed herself to not having Thayet’s love, but if she can’t have the intimacy she used to have with Thayet, she’ll do her best to avoid proximity, too.

 

          So when Thayet made the royal chambers her home, Buri moved out to Myles of Olau’s townhouse. Myles said she livened the place up. Eleni said she kept George in check. Buri was too upset to realise that she did neither, but she spent her time with George in the Lower City, with Myles on the kind of confidential business where a discreet young person handy with a sharp edge was an asset, escorting Eleni on her errands, sparring with Alanna’s friends and generally behaving like a girl who was finally getting a chance to build a life of her choosing and didn’t know where to start.

 

          When Thayet called on her to help form the Queen’s Riders, Buri felt secure enough to return to the palace and choose rooms that would be handy for the Riders, even if they were a strikingly long way away from Thayet’s. And there she’s stayed, ever since. She’s used enough to moving with the Riders that ‘home’ is a word with little meaning, but these rooms are as close to home as anything else. On occasion, she shares them with Raoul. They fit her like a second skin, and they encompass Raoul with little difficulty. Thayet’s children, too, pass in and out of them without registering any discomfort, and so do Alanna’s. But Buri cannot fathom the idea of Thayet ever coming to them. She never does so, and Buri won’t dignify that gesture with the name of delicacy.

 

          _Pity, again_ , Buri thinks as she opens the shutters one bright and sunny morning, and is distracted by the princess climbing up the ivy.

 

          Buri merely sighs and throws Vania a coil of rope to climb instead. That child is not going to be discouraged by anything less than a vat of blazebalm. Delicate hints like shutting the window won’t even register.

 

          Vania slithers over the windowsill, a slip of a thing with pointy elbows and knobbly knees, a tangle of dark curly hair, wicked slate-blue eyes and a wickeder grin. Like her mother and eldest sister, and unlike Lianne, who approaches nearly all elegant social interactions as if they might be poison (and therefore most closely resembles her Aunt Buri), Vania’s beauty will be her weapon one day. Buri has a funny suspicion that it will be a very different sort of weapon to the softening tactic Thayet and Kally use it as. She’s definitely never saying that aloud, though, least of all to Thayet.

 

          “What are you doing here?” Buri demands, wrapping a robe around herself and poking at the brazier. (It isn’t a _warm_ bright and sunny morning.)

 

          “I just wanted to see you,” Vania says charmingly.

 

          “Oh yes,” Buri says darkly. “And are you done distracting my Riders?”  


          Vania is a favourite with everyone in the Riders. She’s easy to like, hard to scare, and very good with horses and arrows. She knows simple healing spells and applies them freely. She makes a delightful lucky charm and there is hardly an ounce of pity in her, which means Buri finds her much easier company than Kally, Roald or Jasson. Buri loves all Thayet’s children, but Kally, Roald and Jasson show their mother’s instincts in that direction. Buri’s sure that will carry them far and do many people a lot of good, but she personally has yet to wash off the marks that Thayet’s left on her. It’s not easy to love a goddess when you know you’re not her choice, and Buri wasn’t wise enough to make her peace with that when she was a young girl. She was never Thayet’s chosen lover, and she was never going to be. Pity is what made that clear to her, and Buri has never been able to deal with the emotion since.

 

          It’s fortunate that pity isn’t one of Vania’s vices, because Vania spends a lot of time with Buri when Buri’s there to spend time with. Sometimes Buri tricks herself into wondering if she and Thayet could have had a daughter like Vania, could have raised her as a warrior and a lady both, in Thayet’s image. For all that’s passed since they were girls, Thayet is still Buri’s image of perfection.

 

          “I wanted to say good morning and your door was locked,” Vania says, with beautiful logic. “Can we go to breakfast? I’m hungry.”

 

          So is Buri, and it’s still a decent time for breakfast. Late for her, but Buri got back at a silent hour of the night after an exhausting ride and these days Buri has to cosset herself a bit after excursions like that. “Fine. Where?”

 

          “Breakfast’s on the table at home,” Vania suggests. By ‘home’ she means the royal family’s apartments, with the great central room the family eat in when they wish to be private.

 

          “What about the mess?” Buri counters. “Today’s porridge with cream, and Jessony’ll give you as much honey as you like if you ask her nicely.”

 

          Vania’s eyes light up, as much at the thought of an authorised visit to the barracks as a tasty breakfast, and Buri doesn’t spare a moment to be sorry for her misdirection. She’s not holding a grudge, but on her bad days – and today is a bad day, she’s tired and hungry and she can smell blood where there is none – Thayet’s beauty and her pity cut Buri as deeply as they did when she was a girl. On days like these, Buri is not going to set foot in Thayet’s home, nor will she eat her food. She’ll stick to her own territory, and be grateful for the distinction.

 

          She and Thayet are no longer what they once were, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone grows up. But Buri still misses the days when Thayet’s smiles were whole and real, and came with no mortifying pity attached.


End file.
